"AYAM Brand tuna spread are delicious when made into sandwiches. Although there are other similar products available in the market, they all pale in comparison with my favourite," quips a friend during our grocery shopping at a local supermarket.
I nod in acknowledgment of his comment. Ayam Brand products are a staple in kitchens throughout Southeast Asia - and mine is no exception. Taking advantage of the moment to share knowledge acquired over decades of service with a major Klang Valley company involved in the food and beverage industry, my friend draws attention to the famous strutting rooster logo on the tin in his hand and says: "Contrary to popular belief, this brand owes its origin to an innovative Frenchman who came to Malaya in the 19th century." Amused at my surprised look, he shares with me a most interesting tale of both legend and economic success.
Alfred Clouet was born at the northern French port of Le Havre in 1866. While not much is known about his early life, records show that the son of a tailor left France to join his future wife in New York in 1889. Unfortunately, she died soon after his arrival.
In an attempt to take his mind off a broken heart, Clouet enlisted in the French army and became part of a force destined for Indochina. During a port call in Singapore in 1892, he fell head over heels with the island and never returned to his ship.
At his new home, Clouet found work with a Frenchman, surnamed Labarbe, who ran a trading company dealing in cigars. The duo grew so close that Labarbe left the company in Clouet's care after he decided to return to France for good.
EXPANDING THE BUSINESS
Keen to expand the business beyond tobacco products and capitalise on the growing expatriate community in the British settlement, the intrepid entrepreneur trained his sights on importing premium products such as French perfumes and cosmetics as well as premium Bordeaux wines.
With a 3,000 franc contribution from his father, Clouet registered a new import-export firm, A. Clouet & Co and set-up business addresses in key locations within downtown Singapore like Prinsep Street, Malacca Street, Raffles Quay and Wallich Street to maximise product visibility.
The businesses, however, didn’t turn out to be as successful as Clouet had hoped. While not forsaking them, the shrewd businessman once again shifted focus on a new venture which allowed him to introduce to Malaya a novel French invention that was already enjoying strong responses in the United States and Europe.
"The origin of food preservation through canning can be traced all the way back to the first years of the Napoleonic Wars. With military campaigns plagued by limited and inconsistent food supplies, the French government offered a handsome cash award of 12,000 francs to any inventor who could devise a cheap and effective method to make food last longer," explained my friend as we make our way to the checkout counter.
While waiting in line, he tells of an unusual incident in 1809 when French confectioner and brewer, Nicolas Appert noticed that food cooked inside jars didn’t spoil unless their seals leaked. Encouraged by his observation, Appert subsequently developed an effective method to seal food in glass jars.
Although it would take a further 50 years before the world learned about the role of microbes in food spoilage from Louis Pasteur, Appert was recognised for his ground-breaking process and awarded the prize in 1810 by Count Montelivert, a French Minister of the Interior.
The French Army began experimenting with canned food but the lack of progress in successful mass production and an inefficient chain of supply prevented them from shipping large quantities across the vast French Empire. As a result, the war ended before the process could be perfected.
CANNING TECHNOLOGY IMPROVES
At the end of hostilities, another French national Philippe de Girard improved on Appert's idea by using tin cans instead of glass jars. De Girard brought his technique to London in 1810 and secured a patent after using British merchant Peter Durand as an agent.
A year later, the patent was sold to Bryan Donkin and John Hall. By then, the process used sealed airtight cans made of tinned wrought iron. The slow canning process, coupled with the fact that each can had to be laboriously made by hand, made canned food a luxury item that was simply too expensive for ordinary people.
My apprehensions at the tale coming to a premature end dissipates when suggests an adjournment to a nearby food court after we’d completed our shopping. Choosing a side table with a wide berth for our heavily laden trolleys, we sit down to enjoy a light meal consisting of traditional mee mamak and the customary teh tarik.
During the course of the meal, my friend gestures towards a nearby refrigerator filled with drinks and draws comparison to Clouet's time when this modern convenience was still at experimentation stage.
"Through mass introduction of cheap tinned food, the Frenchman hoped that his idea would enable the people to have easy access to meals that could be stored within the confines of home without any worry of spoilage and consumed at a time of their choice," he explains.
SARDINE CHOICE
Clouet decided on sardines as a suitable candidate for his new venture after visits to markets revealed the abundance and affordability of this popular food fish during peak seasons while scarcity drove up prices by many folds during low periods. The observation made Clouet confident of good public response as his food preservation technique would make sardines a regular feature on both local and expatriate dinner tables all year round.
Production of tinned sardines began in 1899 and Clouet, in an attempt to give his brand identity, created a logo that prominently featured a strutting rooster, the French emblem for par excellence. In time, the branding took on an indigenous flavour when local traders started referring to the Cock Brand of sardines as Ayam Brand or Chop Ayam in the Malay language. The local reference caught on so well that the management decided to change the company’s official name to Ayam Brand in the years leading up to the Second World War.
Hoping to capitalise on the popularity of his brand, Clouet rebranded his perfume business, which was ranked second best among all his ventures, under the name Chop Satu Ayam or One Rooster Brand.
After some time, he discovered that a person by the name of A. Gaffoor was selling similar perfumed products under the name Chop Dua Ayam (Two Roosters Brand). Gaffoor was subsequently taken to court and Clouet won the law suit.
INTERNATIONAL RECOGNITION
Undaunted by the trademark infringement incident, Clouet remained steadfast in taking his business to greater heights. A person who understood the awesome power of advertising and marketing, he sought to gain as much mileage as possible for his fledgling company by taking part in international competitions. Participation in the 1900 Paris Exposition Universelle (Universal Exhibition) paid off handsomely for Clouet as it yielded two gold medals for his product.
Eager to announce the prestigious international recognition to potential customers, Clouet bought advertising space in major newspapers in Malaya including the Straits Times. Over time, the advertisements also helped to promote an extended range of other canned foods such as mushrooms and peas.
Fame and success made Clouet a well-respected member of the colonial society in Singapore. Apart from acting as Belgian Consul at one point in time, he was also remembered for using himself as an example while writing in the Straits Times to entice French capitalists in search of investment opportunities to the Malay Peninsula.
At the same time, Clouet was also a person who was always ready to embrace practical innovation. His cottage, at No. 105 Orchard Road, enjoyed the distinction of being one of the first homes in Singapore to be supplied with gas for cooking and lighting purposes.
SETBACKS AND RESILIENCE
Things, however, weren’t always smooth sailing for Clouet. Among the more serious setbacks faced was an incident when his warehouses in Malacca Street were razed to the ground on March 23, 1901. Undeterred, he set up a temporary office, first at No. 8 Battery Road and then later at No. 7 Raffles Quay. Not long after, it was business as usual all over again for the unwavering Frenchman.
In 1907, Clouet entered into a partnership with Victor Clumeck who hailed from the French-speaking Hewish community in Cairo. Under the name A. Coulet & Co, the duo dabbled in the business of importing construction materials including colourful European tiles which wealthy Straits Chinese used to decorate their shophouses and homes. Some of these mosaics can still be found in many parts of Malaysia and Singapore today.
During his time in Singapore, Clouet remarried and, at the onset of the First World War, his sons, Clarence and Francis left for the Western Front where Germany had gained military control of important industrial regions in France. Their mother who accompanied them to France passed away in Paris in 1914.
Towards the end of our meal, the tale too comes to an end. My friend ends by telling me about Clouet's devastation at the news of his wife's demise and how it was healed over time by his healthy partnership with Clumeck.
Before parting ways, he challenges me to find out more about the partnership. "Although the Ayam Brand founder retired to Nice on the French Riviera many years later and passed away in 1965, just a year short of his 100th birthday, it’d be interesting to find out what happened to A. Coulet & Co after he left Malaya" he remarks.
Soon as I reach home, I take up the challenge by searching the entire length of my study for clues. After sifting through the boxes of old documents, vintage newspapers and past issues of the Straits Times Annual for hours, nuggets of information about the company slowly begin to surface.
TAKE OVER AND FURTHER PROGRESS
In 1954, A. Coulet & Co was taken over by the Denis Freres Group of Companies. For the first time in its history, the corporate exercise resulted in the company expanding its horizons beyond Malaya. The expansion gave A. Coulet & Co access to some 30 markets around the world in three continents, including Australia, New Zealand, France and Britain.
A newspaper article published close to the time of the takeover reveals an equally captivating history of the family-owned Denis Freres Group. The company, one of the largest trading and business groups in Southeast Asia today, was founded in Vietnam in 1862 thanks to the efforts of Etienne Denis, a trading ship captain, who hailed from Bordeaux, France.
Prior to that date, Denis regularly plied the Europe - South America trade route but sea blockages at the onset of the American Civil War in 1861 forced him to set his sights on the opposite side of the world.
Denis went on to commit the entirety of his wealth to the construction of a schooner brig named La Mouette or the Seagull. Schooners were favoured as they were the fastest long-range sailing ships of their time and the speed made the transportation of perishable goods to far-flung regions in Asia possible.
La Mouette set sail for the Far East with Denis's sons Gustave and Emile on June 3, 1862. After scouting the viability of locations such as Bangkok, Hong Kong and Singapore as export destinations, the siblings finally arrived in Saigon four months after they set sail from France. In November 1862, the two brothers established the Denis Freres Company.
Shifting my attention to a full page colour advertisement in the 1956 Straits Times Annual featuring a map which indicates parts of the world where the company sold products like fertilisers, provisions, building materials and even anthracite coal, the rapid expansion of A. Coulet & Co within two short years after the merger was nothing short of phenomenal.
At the same time, my boxes of business receipts accumulated over the past three decades from flea markets and rescued from buildings around Alor Star that were about to be demolished yielded some very interesting results.
While the company's original name and rooster logo were maintained in receipts issued by distribution branches like A. Coulet & Co (K.L.) Ltd., Kuala Lumpur in the late 1950s, there was quite a handful of companies that used similar looking Ayam motifs as part of their trademarks. In order to avoid any copyright infringements and potential law suits, objects like globes and palm trees were incorporated into the design.
The company has grown from strength to strength over the years. Today, Ayam Brand employs in excess of 2,000 people, primarily in Malaysia, where the company operates factories in Batu Pahat and Taiping. The latter is the largest sardine canning factory in Southeast Asia. Abroad, there are manufacturing plants in Ho Chi Minh City and Indonesia.
The Ayam Brand trademark has certainly come a long way since the day it was created by a Frenchman who had the tenacity and vision to turn dreams into reality nearly 130 years ago. With one in every two households in Malaysia having used Ayam brand products at some point in time, the sky is the limit for one of our best home-grown French-inspired companies.